HANNAH MURPHY: Uber, Lyft, Airbnb, Slack,

it's a bumpy year for San Francisco's tech IPOs.

But in a city that's home to some

of America's richest and poorest,

there are questions over how far the big tech

billions will spread.

MAN: San Francisco is the exemplar of inequality.

MAN: Most of the money we make goes to our living

expenses and our work expenses.

JONAS JACKEL: There is a housing crisis.

People can't afford to live here.

The people who would normally shop here

have moved out of the area.

KALENA MASCHING: We're seeing two bedrooms

start at 1.6 million.

And some of them going up to over three million.

HANNAH MURPHY: Between them, the latest crop of IPOs

could generate $230 billion of wealth,

creating as many as 6,000 new millionaires in the process.

One way that money could benefit San Francisco

is in real estate.

The property market in some neighbourhoods is already going

into overdrive.

KALENA MASCHING: We're seeing it to be really competitive

[? movement ?] right now.

People are just trying to get in before the IPO money.

They're convinced that the IPOs are

going to drive up the prices.

But--

HANNAH MURPHY: But there's an urgency?

KALENA MASCHING: There's an urgency.

HANNAH MURPHY: [INAUDIBLE]

KALENA MASCHING: We're seeing five,

10 offers on most single family houses really depending

on the neighbourhood.

But we are seeing things on average still sell 100-200,000

over list price.

HANNAH MURPHY: For those living and working in these areas,

the benefits of tech money are plain to see.

KALENA MASCHING: You can go up a couple of blocks

and you can actually walk to almost every single tech

company that's going IPO this year.

And now you've got everything right here.

You have a grocery store.

You've got bars down that direction,

restaurant's all up and down this street.

There's cafes, dry cleaners.

Some of the parks are getting facelifts.

So I think overall it's a positive impact on the feel

of the neighbourhood.

HANNAH MURPHY: Other parts of the city

are struggling, though.

And here, the latest round of IPOs

could ultimately do more harm than good.

JONAS JACKEL: Here we are again.

Huckleberry Bikes has been on Market Street

since we opened in 2011.

It was an area where on a daily basis there were just thousands

of cyclists riding by.

So we thought it would be a good location

for that kind of bike shop.

BRIAN SMITH: It was also just a more affordable neighbourhood

than many other neighbourhoods in this city.

This community just simply had different people living here

when we moved here.

It had primarily artists, musicians,

who could afford to live in spaces like these

where they lived and worked in the same unit.

And they don't live here anymore.

They can't afford to live here anymore.

JONAS JACKEL: Well, the ironic thing

is that gentrification hasn't really been good for business.

It hasn't really helped us grow.

We did better in our early years before the tech companies

really fully moved in.

But they're not like encouraging their employees

to come shop here or to spend money in the local economy.

BRIAN SMITH: Next door to us there used to be--

what do you call it?

A topless venue--

JONAS JACKEL: Yeah, no, there was--

BRIAN SMITH: --if you will.

JONAS JACKEL: It's called a--

BRIAN SMITH: --a gentlemen's club,

called the Market Street Cinema.

It was here for many years.

Our business was better when Market Street Cinema was

open than when there was a condo building

with a vacant retail space that's been vacant for I don't

know, a year, two years.

HANNAH MURPHY: Jonas and Brian were once held up as poster

boys for regeneration in mid-market--

an area home to Twitter, Uber, and many more big tech's

big names.

Many moved in thanks to tax breaks offered

by city hall eight years ago.

Now, local government wants to change

that policy with a proposal by city supervisor, Gordon Mar,

to raise payroll taxes.

So can you tell us about the proposal

and why the city needs it?

GORDON MAR: I really commend all the companies

and their executives and employees for their success.

But there's been a downside to this tech boom

that's played out over the last decade in our city,

and that's the housing affordability crisis, gridlock

on our streets, and the growing homelessness crisis in our city

where tens of thousands of our community members

live unsheltered on the streets largely due to the growing

inequality in our cities.

HANNAH MURPHY: So what do you say

to critics who might say that the tax might not

raise very much funds or that it might deter

tech companies from coming?

GORDON MAR: It's a very modest amount

of tax, 1.5% on billions of dollars of wealth

that's going to be flowing into these companies.

And this is a tax that they would have already

had to pay prior to 2012.

HANNAH MURPHY: If it's voted in in November,

supervisor Mar's payroll tax reform

could add hundreds of millions of dollars annually

to an existing 500 million dollar affordable housing fund.

For the thousands of homeless people

sleeping rough on San Francisco streets,

the money couldn't come soon enough.

DON FALK: We are three different residential hotel buildings.

The ambassador are the two brick ones.

Then the West next to the ambassador

and [INAUDIBLE] where you can see

the sign of the [INAUDIBLE].

They constitute nearly 500 residential hotel units,

all of them occupied by people earning under $1,000 a month.

So very, very low income population.

HANNAH MURPHY: Don Falk is chief executive officer of TNDC--

a non-profit organisation dedicated to providing social

housing for some of San Francisco's poorest residents.

DON FALK: Here we have very, very low income people.

And at the same time, right across the street,

we're seeing a luxury hotel and high-end condominiums

being built, leaving those who are marginalised

with fewer options.

Now we see the $5 cup of coffee.

And who-- what Tenderloin resident can

afford $5 for a cup of coffee?

HANNAH MURPHY: Right, the longtime residents

who've been here.

DON FALK: Yes, yes.

HANNAH MURPHY: As Don sees it, TNDC's job

is to keep their housing units affordable for the long term

even as rents go up all around them.

DON FALK: The kind of thing that TNDC and many of our sister

agencies is doing is not only building affordable housing

but putting the ownership of the land

into the hands of nonprofits so that the properties here

will serve low income people in perpetuity.

HANNAH MURPHY: But housing is only part of the problem.

As wages for the city's top earners soar,

so, too, has the cost of living here.

Low income workers are struggling to cope.

Uber drivers have been among the most vocal.

WOMAN: Strikers, thank you for being here.

[INAUDIBLE]

[CHEERING]

MOSTAFA MAKLAD: When Uber started,

they actually used to take 5% from drivers.

Then after a while, they increased that

to 10%, then 15%, then 20%.

When I started driving, we used to make around 2,000

by working for 30 to 40 hours a week,

and that's before expenses.

But to make the same amount of money and even less,

we have to work between 70 to 80 hours a week and even more.

We barely have enough money for ourselves.

We are the one who actually build and help the company

become what it is right now.

And that company has always been trying

to do everything they can to avoid taking responsibility

for drivers.

HANNAH MURPHY: Tech IPOs will bring hundreds of billions

of dollars to San Francisco this year alone.

But that money stands to widen the city's wealth gap

at a time when many residents are already

feeling left behind.

MOSTAFA MAKLAD: If they're not going to take responsibility

for the workers that they work for their company,

we will force them by the law.

KALENA MASCHING: One of my teammates

just got a studio into contract for about a million dollars.

Their company hasn't gone IPO.

But they chose to get in early to kind of avoid media bidding

more later.

GORDON MAR: We're in an unprecedented situation

where we have the median rent for a one bedroom apartment

in San Francisco is now $3,500 a month,

which is among the highest in the country or even the world.

DON FALK: Everybody-- it shouldn't

be such a special thing.

Everybody ought to be able to live in this kind of a place.

BRIAN SMITH: There's a lot of challenges in this

neighbourhood that are encouraging us to look

elsewhere.

Time will tell, but I would say right now

we're leaning towards moving on.

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